TIP: Click on subject to list as thread! ANSI
echo: english_tutor
to: Anton Shepelev
from: Ardith Hinton
date: 2022-03-26 21:06:00
subject: Old stuff

Hi, Anton!  Recently you wrote in a message to Anton Shepelev:

AS>  In Louse H. Briesemester's "Island Winds", 


          Uh... "louse" is the singular of "lice".  If you mean "Louise", that is AFAIK a feminine variant of "Louis" often used in English.  Either way I am unable to find any reference to this author from where I sit.  I see there's a shop on Prince Edward Island (+/- 4000 miles away) called "Island Winds" and I see there's a school in Texas named after A.J. Briesemeister.

          Not to worry.  I had to keep checking my own spelling there....  :-)



AS>  I came upon another interesting nominal use of `part':

AS>       And barometers are considered a part of the standard
AS>       equipment of every home.

AS>  I called it interesting because I should have omitted the
AS>  indefinite article.


          Should you?  I see that in a reply to Alexander you mentioned a head Which had somehow been disconnected from various other parts of the same body. But thanks to Miss Langwidge I'm reminded of the words of a 19th century poem:

  
               I am a part of all that I have met.
                                    -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
                 

          Nowadays folks tend to use as few words as possible, and I would have omitted the indefinite article there too.  OTOH I notice that the extra letters others don't want to waste often reappear in expressions such as "at this point time" or "off of", which both I & US grammarians consider to be redundant.  :-Q




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
                                                                   
* Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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